The Valiant MacDonald
by shallowness
Summary: A mistake, an incident and a battle Archie can't win. Archie MacDonald/Lexie McTavish. Set around series 2.


Title: The Valiant MacDonald  
Author: shallowness  
Fandom: Monarch of the Glen  
Rating: PG  
Characters/Pairing: Archie MacDonald/Lexie McTavish  
Summary: A mistake, an incident and a battle Archie can't win.  
Author's Note: Inspired by Lexie's outfits. Set around series 2. 930 words.

 **The Valiant MacDonald: shallowness**

This was a mistake, Archie thought, but he didn't know how he could have avoided it. He was late for this meeting for very good reason, dashing in after Golly to take the last two seats in the room, and getting a frown from his father from the stage, where he was welcoming all and sundry. Archie had wanted to frown back, they'd been running late because of something his father had done, or rather, hadn't done, years and years ago.

Nothing new there.

Then Hector MacDonald had called up the guest speaker, and even then, Archie had been like a little lamb, with no idea of the torture that lay ahead. William Tulloch-Reid looked harmless, a bit fusty, in a light grey suit that hung a little too loosely on him.

When the welcoming applause stopped, Tulloch-Reid opened his mouth. Archie, like everyone else in the room, felt his heart sink. Their guest speaker had an unfortunate voice. Well, it was more of a drone, really. Whoever had booked him either hadn't known, or was a nasty old so-and-so. Like the room at large, Archie put on his politest face and settled slightly into his seat.

The content of the speech wasn't that interesting, hackneyed Burns quote here, a bit of jargon there. Archie could see Kilwillie, seated next to his father, was thinking up the much better speech he'd have come up with extemporaneously, and Archie didn't blame the man.

The room was hot, full of bored people staving off drowsiness in their own personal way, and then the incident happened.

The rest of the Glenfogle party, Archie's mother, Lexie and Duncan, were sitting in front of Archie and Golly. Archie hadn't thought much of it when he'd sat down, so determined not to cause more of a scene than he and Golly had by their late arrival. If anything, he'd been glad they'd got a seat near the rest. But the incident changed everything.

Seeking a non-existent breeze, Lexie lifted up her long, loose hair and pulled it over her shoulder. The movement caught Archie's eye. The result of her actions made it impossible to look away.

Lexie was wearing one of her bright tops, this one turquoise like the sky above the loch on a gorgeous day, one of those tops that looked very fine at the front, but from behind, well, it looked like she was wearing a hankie, or a bikini. She definitely wasn't wearing a bra. Archie had noticed and admired those tops before, as he was no different from most men when it came down to it. He'd never been seated behind her wearing one with nothing else to distract him except a boring man droning on about goodness knows what before, though.

Tulloch-Reid's speech was failing as a distraction from all that skin, all that Lexie skin bared to Archie apart from a few slats of wood and two pieces of cloth tied together in a knot.

And now all Archie could think was how easily that knot would come undone and if he pushed the material away, her whole back would be available to him. What would it be like to press his lips, first to her shoulder, then downwards, following the line of her spine with his mouth? Would her muscles tense, then relax? Would a throaty moan would come out of her lips, or even his name?

He shifted a little, wishing he'd worn a kilt, not trousers, wishing Lexie was sitting somewhere else, preferably with her back to a wall, not in front of him and all the men of the area.

Archie's gaze darted to his side, but Golly's eyes were closed, and, incredibly, he didn't seem to be the only one sneaking in a wee kip, as if the sexiest back in all of Scotland wasn't on display right there in front of them.

Archie forced himself to look at the stage, noticing his father was sitting ramrod straight and glassy-eyed, Kilwillie looked as if he was smelling something foul. The guest speaker said, "And my second point is.."

Archie's eyes returned to the lovely, tempting back of one Lexie McTavish. He gulped. Best not look there again. He'd never known he had such a thing for a woman's back before, but apparently he did. Just one more thing he'd learned about himself since returning home.

He could see every breath Lexie took and it was mesmerising. The rest of the room fell away, which was bad, because the next thing he'd be doing was reaching out for her…

Very bad, because something inside him was convinced that touching Lexie would lead to very good things.

In desperation, he started counting the wood panels in the room. By Tulloch-Reid's third point, Archie was frantically listing all the repairs that needed doing in the house, from roof to basement, trying to remember the likely prices – something he generally avoided doing. Everyone else in the audience was fighting sleep. Archie's battle was against Lexie's back, and as the contours of it became etched in his memory, he knew he was defeated.

Eons later, as he joined in the applause, Archie valiantly tried to ignore the way that Lexie rolled her stiff neck and then her shoulders. It really wouldn't be an appropriate time or place to offer her a massage.

Some other day, some other location…perhaps.

Archie wasn't the only one to rush out into the cool air and then to the nearest place liquid refreshment was available, but his reasons were entirely different from most people's.


End file.
